by Carter Chris
His expression took on such a deep frown that his forehead looked like a tire print. ‘You’re kidding . . . Where? . . . Are you sure? . . . OK, stay put, keep your eye on the house, and if anything changes call me straight away.’ Garcia disconnected, and ran down to Captain Blake’s office. Five minutes later he was dialing Hunter’s cellphone number. Hunter answered it on the first ring.
‘Robert, where are you?’
‘Sitting in my car, waiting, gambling on a hunch.’
‘What? What hunch?’
‘Too complicated to explain now.’ Hunter had already picked up the anxiety in Garcia’s voice. ‘What have you got?’
‘You’re not going to believe this. One of our teams hit the jackpot. We’ve got a solid lead on Ken Sands. Apparently he’s been working for an Albanian drug outfit. We have a positive lock on his present location.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere in Pomona. I’ve got the address here with me.’
Pomona was way out of town.
‘We’ve got a green light from the captain,’ Garcia said. ‘A search warrant is being pushed through the courts as we speak.’
‘How fast can we get a SWAT team in place?’
‘Five to ten minutes to get a team deployed. I already have someone getting me all the information on the location, including architectural drawings. We’ll probably be able to brief the SWAT captain in fifteen, twenty minutes max.’
Hunter consulted his watch. ‘I won’t make the briefing, Carlos. I’m on the other side of town, and rush hour started twenty minutes ago. Give me the address in Pomona and I’ll meet you there.’
Hunter disconnected, and at that exact moment the car he’d been following all day started moving again.
‘Damn,’ he said, turning the key in his ignition and stepping on the gas.
One Hundred and Eight
The windowless room was located at the basement of the PAB. Five SWAT-team members were sitting two-by-two in school classroom formation, with the fifth member sitting by himself at the back. They were all wearing black fatigues and bulletproof vests with the word ‘SWAT’ spray-painted across the back. Their black helmets were resting on their desks. At the front of the room, their captain, Jack Fallon, was standing behind a podium. Garcia and Captain Blake were to his left.
‘Listen up, gents,’ Fallon said in a commanding voice. The room went absolutely still. He pressed a button and Ken Sands’s latest photograph, the one Hunter had obtained from the prison board, was projected onto the white screen to his right. ‘This charming individual goes by the name of Ken Sands,’ Fallon continued. ‘This is the last known picture we have of him, taken six months ago on the day of his release from the California State Prison in Lancaster.’
‘Looks like a regular scumbag to me, Cap,’ Lewis Robinson, one of the SWAT agents said, causing all the others to laugh.
‘That might be,’ Fallon said, sucking their attention back to him. ‘And that’s why we’re here. Sands is a major suspect in a multiple-homicide investigation. His record shows that he’s very violent, very dangerous, and apparently very intelligent. There’s a good chance that he’s the Sculptor serial killer we’ve all read about in the papers.’
An uneasy murmur broke out among the agents.
‘Which means I don’t even have to tell you how royally disturbed that makes him.’ Fallon pressed the button again and the image on the screen changed to the blueprint of a single-story house. ‘This is our target’s location in Pomona. Our intel tells us he’s inside at the moment.’
The blueprint showed a house with three bedrooms, one of them en-suite, a living room, a dining room, a bathroom, and a large kitchen.
‘Is he alone in the house, Cap?’ Neil Grimshaw, the youngest of the SWAT agents, asked. Grimshaw had joined the team only a week ago. This was his first major operation. He looked tense, but in control.
‘It looks like he’s got at least one other person in there with him,’ Fallon replied and looked at Garcia.
‘That’s the intel we’ve got so far,’ Garcia explained. ‘There’s an LAPD detective watching the house as we speak, trying to gather whatever new info he can.’
‘Do we know if this other person is hostile?’ Robinson asked.
‘We don’t know,’ Garcia replied.
‘Are they armed?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Do we know which room the target is in?’
‘We don’t have that intel.’
‘Fuck, is this guessing day, or what?’ Robinson said. ‘Might as well walk in there blindfolded. So what do we know?’
‘All the information we have is in the folders on your desks,’ Fallon cut in. ‘That’s what we have, that’s what we’ll work with. That’s why we are SWAT. Is that a problem, Robinson?’
‘Just a bit worried about walking into any environment with an uncertain number of hostiles, having zero intel on their firepower, and next to zero on everything else, Cap, that’s all.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Fallon said, as if addressing a two-year-old. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. Would you like to sit this one out, shaky-shorts? We can call you when we go looking for the marshmallow monster in the cupcake factory. That won’t be very dangerous, I promise.’
The room burst out into laughter.
‘OK, we all better be on our toes on this one,’ Fallon carried on. The room went quiet again. ‘Sands has been linked to an Albanian drug outfit, and we all know what that crowd is capable of. We’re taking no risks. We’re going in guns first. I want three teams of two, double-back formation – usual partners. Grimshaw, you’re with me. We’ve got surprise on our side. Sands doesn’t know we’re coming for him tonight, so we’ve gotta act fast. Let’s pack it up, gents. We’ve got a scumbag to take down.’
One Hundred and Nine
Dusk had taken over Los Angeles and the wind had picked up considerably by the time they reached Pomona. The house in question was at the end of an isolated road, in a quiet neighborhood. SWAT, together with Garcia and two other police cars, parked at the top of the road and went the rest of the way on foot. At the moment their most powerful weapon was the surprise factor. The last thing they wanted to do was to give away that advantage by alerting the house occupants to their presence.
On their way to Pomona, Jack Fallon had laid out their assault plan to the three SWAT teams. One team was to enter the house through the back, via the kitchen; one would burst through the front entrance; and the third team would enter through the veranda doors that led to the main bedroom at the left side of the house. LAPD would provide cover from the outside, in case Ken Sands tried to escape through a window.
The detective who’d been observing the house had nothing new to report. All the windows and curtains were shut. They’d been shut all day, which made further reconnaissance impossible. No one had left or entered the house in the past two hours.
There was no sign of Hunter. Garcia had tried calling him twice since they left the PAB but had got no reply.
‘Status check.’ Fallon’s voice came through loud and clear in Garcia’s earpiece.
‘Team Alpha in position,’ came the immediate reply from the first team. ‘But we’re blind. There’s some sort of obstruction under the door. No way of pushing the fiberscope camera in. We’ve got no eyes inside.’
‘Team Beta in position,’ the second team responded. ‘And we’re as blind as a bat as well. No visual.’
The same obstruction had been placed under every door. ‘OK, we’re gonna have to rock and roll blind,’ Captain Fallon said. ‘Are the LAPD in position?’
‘We’re all set,’ Garcia replied, after a quick radio check, his eyes scanning the area for his partner – no Hunter. ‘Search warrant has been granted. We’ve got a green light. Are you sure you want to go in with no eyes?’
Five silent, tense seconds flew by.
‘We have no other option, unless you wanna knock on the door and smile.’
No reply
from Garcia.
‘I thought not. OK, all teams, nothing but your “A” game. Let’s stick to the plan. We still have surprise on our side. Check every corner, you hear?’
‘Roger that.’
‘Alpha, Beta, on my one-count: three . . . two . . . one.’
All three teams were carrying breaching shotguns, which provided a noisier, but much faster, entry to most secure households than enforcer rams.
Garcia heard five loud blasts in quick succession, and then all hell broke loose.
All three teams entered the house almost simultaneously. Lewis Robinson and agent Antonio Toro were team Alpha. They were at the rear.
The back door led directly into the kitchen. Toro blew the locks off the door with the breaching shotgun. A fraction of a second later Robinson kicked the door in and blasted through into the house. He was immediately faced with a big, brawny man who had been sitting at a square table in the center of the room. He had a mountain of small plastic packets filled with white powder in front of him, and an Uzi submachine gun by his side. The door blast caught him completely by surprise, but despite being initially startled, he was already halfway off his seat. He had already scooped up the Uzi and its muzzle was on its way up, searching for targets. His fat finger solidly hugging the trigger.
‘Qij ju,’ he yelled in Albanian, as he saw the first figure in black come through the door. There was no way he would go quietly, and surrender was simply not in his vocabulary.
Robinson was about to yell at him to put down his weapon, but he recognized the threat straight away. The Albanian’s eyes were full of anger and determination.
Shoot or get shot.
Without hesitation, Robinson squeezed the trigger of his Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. It coughed twice. With a sound-suppressor and subsonic ammunition, the noise was no louder than a baby’s sneeze. Both shots hit the Albanian directly in the chest. He stumbled backwards, blood spurting from his wound, and quickly coloring his white T-shirt. The muscle spasms that took over his entire body made his face contort with pain, and his finger tightened on the Uzi’s trigger. A blast of uncontrolled gunfire spit out of the Uzi’s muzzle, violently smashing against the wall and the ceiling behind and above Robinson and Toro’s heads. One of the bullets missed Toro’s forehead by just a few millimeters.
The SWAT agents had carefully studied Ken Sands’s photograph on their way to Pomona. Despite his long hair and beard, they were each certain they’d be able to identify him in the house.
The man in the kitchen wasn’t him.
One Hundred and Ten
SWAT-team Beta was comprised of Charlie Carrillo and Oliver Mensa. They had entered the house through the front door. Mensa was the one who had used the breaching shotgun, so Carrillo was the first to blast through the door. The living room was large but sparsely furnished – an old sofa, a four-seater table, two armchairs, and a TV on top of a wooden box. Sitting on the sofa facing the door was a tall skinny blond man. He looked half stoned. On the sofa next to him was a Sig Sauer P226 X-Five semi-automatic pistol.
The man jumped in his seat like a donkey rejecting a mount as he heard the noise. His gaze seemed distant and totally lost for an instant, and then, as if somebody had waved a magical sobering wand, his eyes refocused with incredible intensity and he went for his gun.
‘Nuh-uh,’ Carrillo said, aiming his MP5 red laser target beam directly at the man’s forehead. ‘Believe me, buddy, you ain’t fast enough.’
The man paused with his hand mid-air, considering his options. He knew he was one sudden movement away from having his brains splattered all over that living room. His eyes burned with rage.
From the door, Mensa had moved like lightning, and while his aim searched the room for any new threats, he was already by the skinny man’s side, and had retrieved the Sig Sauer P226 from the sofa.
‘On the floor with your hands behind your back, now,’ Carrillo ordered.
The skinny man didn’t move.
Carrillo moved closer. They had no time to waste by arguing, or repeating orders. He brought the muzzle of his gun inches away from the man’s face, grabbed him by the hair, and dragged him to the floor.
With his knee locked onto the suspect’s neck, forcing his face to the ground, Carrillo used a special linked zip-tie cuff to tie the skinny man’s wrists and ankles together behind his back. The whole process took less than five seconds.
‘Qij ju, ju ndyrë derr!’ the man screamed, as Carrillo released the pressure from his neck. He started struggling on the ground like a fish out of water. No matter how strong he was, he was going nowhere.
Carrillo took one last look at the man’s face.
It wasn’t Ken Sands.
One Hundred and Eleven
Hunter didn’t drive to Pomona. He made a last-second decision to follow his hunch. Since he had come off the phone with Garcia he’d been following it for almost two hours. It had first taken him to Woodland Hills, in the southwestern part of the San Fernando Valley, and then to the grounds of a derelict building on the outskirts of Canoga Park.
The weather had changed again, and Hunter could smell rain in the air. He parked his car way out of sight, and carefully proceeded on foot. Under the darkness of night, it took him four minutes to cover the distance.
He passed a dilapidated iron gate that led him to the weed-strewn concrete forecourt of a dingy industrial building. It looked like an abandoned medium-sized warehouse or depot, but its walls still looked solid from the outside. The few windows Hunter could see were all smashed, but they were high up, by the building’s gable roof – too high for anyone to get to without a ladder.
Hunter hid himself behind a rusty dumpster and observed the structure for a few minutes – no movement. He carried on circumnavigating the building from a safe distance. When he reached the back of the building he saw the black pickup truck. The same pickup truck he’d been following all day.
Everything looked absolutely still.
Being as quiet as he could and using the shadows for cover, Hunter moved closer.
When he got to the pickup truck he was able to see the outline of a dark doorway about eight feet wide in the building’s back wall. The large, sliding metal doors were open, and the gap was large enough for Hunter to get through without having to push them any further, which was an advantage – he doubted the rusty sliding mechanism would be silent.
He stepped inside and stood still for a moment, listening. The only light came from the smashed windows by the ceiling, but on a moonless night like this it gave Hunter no guidance. The place smelled of urine and decay. The air was stale and heavy, scratching at his throat and nostrils every time he breathed in.
He heard no sound, and decided to switch on his flashlight. As he did, he found himself in a room around seventy-five feet square, with a single steel door set in the middle of the wall ahead of him. The door had a dappled gunmetal look to its surface. The concrete floor was littered with empty bottles, used condoms, broken glass, discarded syringes and other debris left behind by itinerant homeless people and drug users. Taking great care not to step on any of it, Hunter slowly crossed to the metal door. This door was also open, but he would have to push it further to create a gap big enough for him to slide through. Now he saw that a pale white light came from somewhere beyond it.
He switched off his flashlight, gave his eyes a moment to get used to the low light, readied his Heckler & Koch USP .45 Tactical pistol, and steadied himself, ready to push the door open. That was when he heard the ear-piercing mechanical hum of something that sounded like a small chainsaw or an electric kitchen carving knife, followed by a terrified male scream coming from the next room.
The game was up. No more stealth.
Hunter pushed the door open and stepped through, gun first. This room was larger than the previous one, about a hundred feet square. The pale light that lit the room came from two battery-powered pedestal lights positioned about three feet from the back wall, and five apart. B
etween them, a hospital-style metal chair. Its naked occupant had been tied to it by his ankles and wrists. A man in his early fifties. He had chubby cheeks, a pointy chin and a full head of hair that had already gone gray. He looked up and his sad, pleading eyes met Hunter’s.
It took Hunter a second to recognize him. They’d met before at least once. Hunter was sure it was in a function somewhere, probably at last year’s LAPD’s Purple Heart award ceremony. His name was Scott Bradley, the youngest brother of Dwayne Bradley, the Los Angeles District Attorney. But worse, Hunter also recognized the person standing behind the chair, holding an electric kitchen carving knife.
Despite all his suspicions, Hunter could barely believe his eyes.
One Hundred and Twelve
Captain Fallon and new recruit, Neil Grimshaw, were SWAT-team Gamma. Their task was to enter the house through the large French doors on the veranda that led into the house’s main bedroom. With the curtains shut, they had no way of knowing if the room was empty or not, and, if it was occupied, how many were in there, or if they were carrying any weapons. Surprise and speed were their trump cards.
Grimshaw blasted the doors’ lock with a single shotgun shot, sending a shower of broken glass up into the air, and splintering the wood. Before the glass hit the ground, Fallon had kicked the doors open and entered the house, his trained eyes taking in the entire room at once. There was a built-in wardrobe on the left, a double-bed mattress on the floor, pushed up against the wall directly in front of him, a small portable TV on top of a sideboard to the right, and a large mirror on the floor with tens of already cut lines of what could only be cocaine. A naked man with a bushy ponytail was on the mattress. His back was towards Fallon. The moans of pleasure from the petite, short-haired blonde girl who had her legs around him quickly became frightened screams. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen.
The man didn’t even turn. Still with the girl’s legs wrapped around his hips, he rolled to the left and reached for the Uzi submachine gun that was resting against the wall.
